685 
S516 
opy 1 



FREEDOM IN" 'KA.NSJ^S. 



SPEECH 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 



m THE SEIlTATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



K 3 / 

'^ MARCH 3, 1858. 



WASHrNTGTON. 

lUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS, 

STSREOT/PE EDITION. 

1858. 



r 6 n 



A 



SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD 



' Mr. PREs:DENr : Eight years ago, we slew the 

Wilmot Proviso in the Senate Chamber, and 
buried it with triumphal demonstrations under 
2 the floors o*" the Capitol. Four years later, we 
i" exploded altogether the time-honored system of 
^ governing the Territories by Federal rules and 
regulations, and published and proclaimed in its 
stead a new gospel of popular sovereignty, whose 
ways, like those of wisdom, were to be ways of 
pleasantness, ?.nd all of whose paths were sup- 
posed to be flowery paths of peace. Neverthe- 
less, the question whether there shall be Slavery 
or no Slavery in the Territories, is again the stir- 
ring passage of the day. The restless Proviso 
has burst the cerements of the grave, and, striking 
hands here in our very presence with the gentle 
spirit of popular sovereignty run mad, is seen 
raging freely in our halls, scattering dismay 
among the Administration benches in both 
Houses of Congress. Thus an old and unwel- 
come lesson is read to us anew. The question 
of Slavery in the Federal Territories, which are 
the nurseries of future States, independently of 
all its moral and humane elements, involves a 
dynastical struggle of two antagonistical sys- 
tems, the labor of slaves and the labor of free- 
men, for mastery in the Federal Union. One of 
these systems partakes of an aristocratic charac- 
ter ; the other is purely democratic. Each one 
of the existing States has staked, or it will ulti- 
mately stake, not only its internal welfare, but 
also its influence in the Federal councils, on the 
decision of that contest. Such a struggle is not 
to be arrested, quelled, or reconciled, by tempo- 
rary expedients or compromises. 

Mr. President, I always engage reluctantly in 
these discussions, which awaken passion just in 
the degree that their importance demands the 
impartial umpirage of reason. This reluctance 
deepens now, when I look around me, and count 
the able contestants who have newly entered the 
lists on either side, and shadowy forms of many 
great and honored statesmen who once were elo- 
quent in these disputes, but whose tongues have 
since become stringless instruments, rise up 
before me. It is, however, a maxim in military 
science, that in preparation for war, every one 
should think as if the last event depended on his 
counsel, and in every great battle each one 
should fight as if ho were the only champion. 
The principle, perhaps is equally sound in politi- 



cal aff, urs. If it be possible, I shall perform my 
present duty in such a way as to wound no just 
sensibilities. I must, however, review the ac- 
tion of Presidents, Senates, and Congresses. T. 
do indeed, with all my heart, reject the instruc- 
tion given by the Italian master of political sci- 
ence, which teaches that all men are bad by na- 
ture, and that they will not fail to show this de- 
pravity whenever they have a fair opportunity. 
Bat jealousy of executive power is a high, prac- 
tical virtue in Republics ; and we shall find it hard 
to deny the justice of the character of free legis- 
lative bodies, which Charles James Fox drew, 
when he said that the British House of Com- 
mons, of which he was at the moment equally an 
ornament and an idol, like every other popular 
assembly, must be viewed as a mass of men ca- 
pable of too much attachment and too much an- 
imosity, capable of being biased by weak and 
even wicked motives, and liable to be governed 
by ministerial influence, by caprice, and by cor- 
ruption. 

Mr. President, I propose to inquire, in the first 
place, why the question before us is attended bj 
real or apparent dangers. 

I think our apprehensions are in part due to 
the intrinsic importance of the transaction con- 
cerned. Whenever we add a new column to 
the Federal colonnade, wo need to lay its found- 
ations so firmly, to shape its shaft with such 
just proportions, to poise it with such exact- 
ness, and to adjust its connections with the ex- 
isting structure so carefully, that instead of fall- 
ing prematurely, and dragging other and ven- 
erable columns with it to the ground, it may 
stand erect forever, increasing the grandeur and 
the stability of the whole massive and imperial 
fabric. Still, the admission of a new State is 
not necessarily or even customarily attended by 
either embarrassments or alarms. We have 
already admitted eighteen new States without 
serious commotions, except in the cases of Mis- 
souri, Texas, and California. We are even now 
admitting two others, Minnesota and Oregon ; 
and these transactions go on so smoothly, that 
only close observers are aware that we are thus 
consolidating our dominion on the shores of Lake 
Superior, and almost at the gates of the Arctic 
ocean. 

It is manifest that the apprehended difficulties 
in the present case have some relation to the 



dispute concerning Slavery, which is raging 
within the Territory of Kansas. Yet it must be 
remembered that nine of the new States which 
have been admitted, expressly established' Sla- 
very, or tolerated it, and nine of them forbade 
it. The excitement, therefore, is due to peculiar 
circumstances. I think there are three of them, 
namely : 

First. That whereas, in the beginning, the as- 
cendency of the slave States was absolute, it is 
now being reversed. 

Second. That whereas, heretofore, the National 
Government favored this change of balance from 
the slave States to the free States, it has now 
reversed this policy, and opposes the change. 

Third. That national intervention in the Ter- 
ritories in favor of slave labor and slave States, 
is opposed to th'e natural, social, and moral de- 
velopments of the Republic. 

It seems almost unnecessarji to demonstrate 
the first of these propositions. In the beginning, 
there were twelve slave States, and only one that 
was free. Now, six of those twelve have become 
free ; and there are sixteen free States to fifteen 
slave States. If the three candidates now here, 
Kansas, Minnesota, and Oregon, shall be admitted 
as free States, then there will be nineteen free 
States to fifteen slave States. Originally, there 
were twenty-four Senators of slave States, and 
only two of a free State ; now, there are thirty- 
two Senators of free States, and thirty of 
slave States. In the first Constitutional Con- 
gress, the slave States had fifty-seven Representa- 
tives, and the one free State had only eight ; now, 
the free States have one hundred and forty-four 
Representatives, while the slave States have only 
ninety. These changes have happened in a period 
during which the slave States have almost unin- 
terruptedly exercised paramount intlueace in the 
Government, and notwithstanding the Consti- 
tution itself has opposed well-known checks to 
•iie relative increase of representation of free 
States. I assume, therefore, the truth of my first 
proposition. 

I suggested, sir, a second circumstance, name- 
ly: That whereas, in the earlier age of the Re- 
public, the National Government favored this 
change, yet it has since altogether reversed that 
policy, and it now opposes the change. I do not 
claim that heretofore the National Government al- 
ways, or even habitually, intervened in the Territo- 
ries in favor of the free States, but only that such 
intervention preponderated. While Slavery ex- 
isted in all of the States but one, at the begin- 
ning, yet it was far less intense in the Northern 
than in some of the Southern States. All of 
the former contemplated an early emancipation. 
The fathers seem not to have anticipated an 
enlargement of the national territory. Conse- 
quently, they expected that all the new States to 
be thereafter admitted would be organized upon 
subdivisions of the then existing States, or upon 
divisions of the then existing national domain. 
That domain lay behind the thirteen States, and 
stretched from the Lakes to the Gulf, and was 
bounded westward by the Mississippi. It was 
naturally di'-ided by the Ohio river, and the 
Northwest Territory and the Southwest Territory 



were organized on that division. It was foreseen, 
even then, that the new States to be admitted 
would ultimately overbalance the thirteen origi- 
nal ones. . They were, however, mainly to be yet 
planted and matured in the desert, with the 
agency of human labor. 

The fathers kneiv only of two kinds of labor, 
the same which now exist among ourselves — 
namely, the labor of African slaves and the 
labor of freemen. The former then predomina- 
ted in this country, as it did throughout the 
continent. A confessed deficiency of slave labor 
could be supplied only by domestic increase, and 
by continuance of the then existing,' importation 
from Africa. The supply of free labor depended 
on domestic increase, and a voluntary immigra- 
tion from Europe. Settlements, which had thus 
early taken on a free-labor character or a slave- 
labor character, were already maturing in those 
parts of old States which were to be ultimately 
detached and formed into new States. When 
new States of this class were organized, they 
were admitted promptly, either as free States or 
as slave States, without objection. Thus Ver- 
mont, a free State, was admitted in 1791 ; Ken- 
tucky, a slave State, in 1792; and Tennessee, 
also a slave State, in 179G. Five new States 
were contemplated to be erected in the North- 
west Territory. Practically it was unoccupied, 
and therefore open to labor of either kind. The 
one kind or the other, in the absence of any an- 
ticipated emulation, would predominate, just 
as Congress should intervene to favor it. Con- 
gress intervened in favor of free labor. This, 
indeed, was an act of the Continental Congress, 
but it was confirmed by the first Constitutional 
Congress. The fathers simultaneously adopted 
three other measures of less direct intervention. 
First, they initiated in 1789, and completed in 
1808, the absolute suppression of the African 
slave trade. Secondly, they organized systems 
of foreign commerce and navigation, which 
stimulated voluntary immigration from Europe. 
Thirdly, they established an easy, simple, and 
uniform process of naturalization. The change 
of the balance of power from the slave States 
to the free States, which we are now witness- 
ing, is due chiefly to those four early measures 
of national intervention in favor of free labor. 
It would have taken place much sooner, if the 
borders of the Republic had remained un- 
changed. The purchase of Louisiana and the 
acquisition of Florida, however, were transac- 
tions resulting from high political necessities, in 
disregard of the question between free labor and 
slave labor. In admitting the new State of 
Louisiana, which was organized on the slave- 
labor settlement of New Orleans, Congress prac- 
ticed the same neutrality which it had before 
exercised in the States of Kentucky and Tennes- 
see. No serious dispute arose until 1819. when 
Missouri, organized within the former province of 
Louisiana, upon a slave-labor settlement in St. 
Louis, applied for admission as a slave State, and 
Arkansas was manifestly preparing to appear 
soon in the same character. The balance of 
power between the slave States and the free 
States was already reduced to an equilibrium, 



and the eleven /ree States had an equal repre- 
sentation with the eleven slave States in the 
Senate of the United States. The slave .States 
unanimously insisted on an unqualified admis- 
sion of Missouri. The free States, with less 
unanimity, demanded that the new State should 
renounce Slavery. The controversy seemed to 
shake the Union to its foundations, and it was 
terminated by a compromise. Missouri was ad- 
mitted as a slave State. Arkansas, rather by 
implication than by express agreement, was to 
be admitted, and it was afterwards admitted, as 
a slave State. On the other hand. Slavery was 
forever prohibited in all that part of the old 
province of Louisiana yet remaining unoccu- 
pied, which lay north of the parallel of 30° 30^ 
north latitude. The reservation for free labor 
included the immense region now known as 
the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and 
seemed ample for eight, ten, or more free States. 
The severity of the struggle and the conditions 
of the compromise indicated very plainly, how- 
ever, that the vigor of national intervention in 
favor of free labor and free States was exhausted. 
Still, the existing statutes were adequate to se- 
cure an ultimate ascendency of the free States. 

The policy of intervention in favor of slave labor 
and slave States began with the further removal 
of the borders of the Republic. I cheerfully 
admit that this policy has not been persistent or 
exclusive, and claim only that it has been and 
yet is predominant. I am not now to deplore 
the annexation of Texas. I remark simply that 
it was a bold measure, of doubtful constitution- 
ality, distinctly adopted as an act of intervention 
in favor of slave labor, and made or intended to 
be made most effective by the stipulation that 
the now State of Texas may hereafter be divided 
and so reorganized as to constitute five slave 
States. This great act cast a long shadow before 
it — a shadow which perplexed the people of the 
free States. It was then that a feeble social 
movement, which aimed by moral persuasion at 
the manumission of slaves, gave place to political 
organizations, which have ever since gone on in- 
creasing in magnitude and energy, directed against 
afurther extension of Slavery in the United States. 
The war between the United States and Mexico, 
and the acquisition of the Mexican provinces of 
New Mexico and Upper California, the fruits of 
that war, were so immediately and directly con- 
sequences of the annexation of Texas, that all 
of those transactions in fact may be regarded as 
constituting one act of intervention in favor of 
slave labor and slave States. The field of the strife 
between the two systems had become widely 
enlarged. Indeed, it was now continental. The 
amazing mineral wealth of California stimulated 
settlement there into a rapidity like that of vege- 
tation. The Mexican laws which prevailed in 
the newly-acquired Territories dedicated them to 
free labor, and thus the astounding question 
arose for the first time, whether the United States 
of America, whose Constitution was based on the 
principle of the political equality of all men, 
would blight and curse with Slavery a conquered 
land which enjoyed universal Freedom. The slave 
States denied the obligation of these laws, and in- 



sisted on their abrogation. The free States main- 
tained them, and demanded their confirmation 
through the enactment of the Wilmot Proviso. 
The slave States and the free Slates were yet in 
equilibrium. The controversy continued here 
two years. The settlers of the new Territories 
became impatient, and precipitated a solution ot 
the question. They organized new free States 
in California and New Mexico. The Mormons 
also framed a Government in Utah. Congress, 
after a bewildering excitement, determined the 
matter by another compromise. It admitted 
California a free State, dismembered New Mexico, 
transferring a large district free from Slavery to 
Texas, whose laws carried Slavery over it, and 
subjected the residue to a Territorial Govern- 
ment, as it also subjected Utah, and stipulated 
that the future States to be organized in those 
Territories should be admitted either as free 
States or as slave States, as they should elect. I 
pass over the portions of this arrangement which 
did not bear directly on the point in conflict. 
The Federal Government prasented this compro- 
mise to the people, as a comprehensive, final, and 
perpetual adjustment of all then existing and all 
future questions having any relation to the sub- 
ject of Slavery within the Territories or else- 
where. The country accepted it with that pro- 
verbial facility which free States practice, when 
time brings on a stern conflict which popular 
passions provoke, and at a distance defy. This 
halcyon peace, however, had not ceased to be cel- 
ebrated, when new-born necessities of trade, 
travel, and labor, required an opening of the 
region in the old province of Louisiana north ol 
36° 30^, which had been reserved in 1820, and 
dedicated to free labor and free States. The old 
question was revived in regard to that Territory, 
and took the narrow name of the Kansas ques- 
tion, just as the stream which Lake Superior 
discharges, now contracting itself into rivers and 
precipitating itself down rapids and cataracts, 
and now spreading out its waters into broad 
seas, assumes a new name with every change o^ 
form, but continues nevertheless the same ma- 
jestic and irresistible flood under every change, 
increasing iu depth and in volume until it loses 
itself in the all-absorbing ocean. 

No one had ever said or even thought that tho 
law of Freedom in this region could l3e repealed, 
impaired, or evaded. Its constitutionality had 
indeed been questioned at the time of its enact- 
ment ; but this, with all other objections, had 
been surrendered as part of the compromise. It 
was regarded as bearing the sanction of the pub- 
lic faith, as it certainly had those of time and 
acquiescence. But the slaveholding people of 
Missouri looked across the border, into Kansas, 
and coveted the land. The slave States could 
not fail to sympathize with them. It seemed as 
if no organization of Government could be effect- 
ed in the Territory. The Senator from Illinois 
[Mr. Douglas] projected a scheme. Under his 
vigorous leading. Congress created two Territo- 
ries — Nebraska and Kansas. The former (ths 
more northern one) might, it was supposed, be 
settled without Slavery, iind become a free State, 
or several free States. The latter (the southern 



6 



one) was accessible to the slave States, bordered 
OQ one of them, and was regarded as containing 
a region inviting to slaveholders. So it might be 
settled by them, and become one or more slave 
States. Thus indirectly a further compromise 
might be eifected, if the Missouri prohibition of 
1820 should be abrogated. Congress abrogated it, 
with the special and effective co-operation of the 
President, and thus the National Government 
directly intervened in favor of slave labor. Loud 
remonstrances against the measure on the ground 
of its violation of the national faith were silenced 
by clamorous avowals of a discovery that Con- 
gress had never had any right to intervene in the 
Territories for or against Slavery, but that the 
citizens of the United States residing within a 
Territory had, like the people of every State, 
exclusive authority and jurisdiction over Slavery, 
as one of the domestic relations. The Kansas- 
Nebraska act only recognised and afiirmed this 
right, as it was said. The theory was not indeed 
new, but a vagrant one, which had for some time 
gone about seeking among political parties the 
charity of adoption, under the name of Squatter 
Sovereignty. It was now brought to the font, 
and baptized with the more attractive appellation 
of Popular Sovereignty. It was idle for a time 
to say that, under the Missouri prohibition, free- 
men in the Territory had all the rights which 
freemen could desire — perfect freedom to do 
everything but establisli Slavery. Popular Sov- 
ereignty offered the indulgence of a taste of the 
fruit of the tree of the knowledge of evil as well 
as of good — a more jterfect freedom. Insomuch as 
the proposition seemed to come from a free State, 
the slave States could not resist its seductions, 
although sagacious men saw that they were de- 
lusive. Consequently, a small and ineffectual 
stream of slave labor was at once forced into Kan- 
sas, engineered by a large number of politicians, 
advocates at once of Slavery and of the Federal 
Administration, who proceeded with great haste 
to prepare the means so to carry the first elec- 
tions as to obtain the laws necessary for the 
protection of Slavery. It is one thing, however, 
to expunge statutes from a national code, and quite 
another to subvert a national institution, even 
though it be only a monument of Freedom loca- 
ted in the desert. Nebraska was resigned to free 
labor without a struggle, and Kansas became a 
theatre of the first actual national conflict be- 
tween slaveholding and free-labor immigrants, 
met face to face, to organize, through the ma- 
chinery of republican action, a civil community. 
The parties differed as widely in their appoint- 
ments, conduct, and bearing, as in their princi- 
ples. The free laborers came into the Territory 
with money, horses, cattle, implements, and en- 
gines, with energies concentrated by associations 
and strengthened by the recognition of some of 
the States. They marked out farms, and sites 
for mills, towns, and cities, and proceeded at 
once to build, to plough, and to sow. They pro- 
posed to debate, to discuss, to organize peace- 
fully, and to vote, and to abide the canvass. 
The slave-labor party entered the Territory ir- 
regularly, staked out possessions, marked them, 
and ',hen, in most instances, withdrew to the 



States from which they had come, to sell their 
new acquisitions, or to return and resume them, 
as circumstances should render one course or the 
other expedient. They left armed men in the 
Territory to keep watch and guard, and to sum- 
mon external aid, either to vote or to fight, as 
should be found necessary. They were fortified 
by the favor of the Administration, and assumed 
to act with its authority. Intolerant of debate, 
and defiant, they hurried on the elections which 
were to be so perverted that an usurpation 
should be established. They rang out their 
summons when the appointed time came, and 
armed bands of partisans, from States near and 
remote, invaded and entered the Territory, with 
banners, ammunition, provisions, and forage, and 
encamped around the polls. They seized the 
ballot-boxes, replaced the judges of elections 
with partisans of their own, drove away their 
opponents, filled the boxes with as many votes 
as the exigencies demanded, and, leaving the re- 
sults to be returned by reliable hands, they 
marched back again to their distant homes, to 
celebrate the conquest, and exult in the prospect 
of the establishment of Slavery upon the soil 
so long consecrated to Freedom. Thus, in a 
single day, they became parents of a State with- 
out affection for it, and childless again without 
bereavement. In this first hour of trial, the new 
system of popular sovereignty signally failed — 
failed because it is impossible to organize, by 
one single act, in one day, a community per- 
fectly free, perfectly sovereign, and perfectly con- 
stituted, out of elements nnassimilated, unar- 
ranged, and uncomposed. Free labor rightfully 
won the day. Slave labor wrested the victory 
to itself by fraud and violence. Instead of a free 
republican Government in the Territory, such 
as popular sovereignty had promised, there was 
then and thenceforth a hateful usurpation. This 
usurpation proceeded without delay and without 
compunction to disfranchise the people. It 
transferred the slave code of Missouri to Kansas, 
without stopjiing in all cases to substitute the 
name of the new Territory for that of the old 
State. It practically suspended popular elections 
for three years — the usurping Legislature as- 
signing that term for its own members, while 
it committed all subordinate trusts to agents 
appointed by itself. It barred the courts and the 
juries to its adversaries by test oaths, and made it 
a crime to think what one pleased, and to write 
and print what one thought. It borrowed all the 
enginery of tyranny, but the torture, from the 
practice of the Stuarts. The party of free labor 
appealed to the Governor (Reederj to correct the 
false election returns. He intervened, but inef- 
fectually, and yet even for that intervention was 
denounced by the Administration organs, and, 
after long and unacceptable explanations, he was 
removed from office by the President. The new 
Governor (Shannon) sustained for a while the 
usurpation, but failed to effect the subjugation 
of the people, although he organized as a militia 
an armed partisan band of adventurers who had 
intruded then^selves into the Territory to force 
Slavery upon the people. With the active co- 
operation of this band, the party of slave labor 



disaraied the Free State emigrants who had now 
learned the necessity of being prepared for self- 
dul'encf, on the borders of the Territory, and on 
the distant roads and rivers which led into it. 
Thev destroyed a bridge that free-labor men used 
in their way to the seat of Government, sacked 
a hotel where they lodged, and broke up and 
cast into the river a press which was the organ 
of their cause. 

The people of Kansas, thus deprived, not mere- 
ly of self-government, but even of peace, tran- 
quillity, and security, fell back on the inalienable 
revolutionary right of voluntary reorganization. 
They determined, however, with admirable tem- 
per, judgment, and loyalty, to conduct their pro- 
ceedings for this purpose in deference and sub- 
ordination to the authority of the Federal Union, 
and according to the line of safe precedents. 

After due elections, open to all the inhabitants 
of the Territory, they organized provisionally a 
State Government at Topeka ; and by the hands 
of provisional Senators, and a provisional Repre- 
sentative, they submitted their Constitution to 
Congress, and prayed to be admitted as a free 
State into the Federal Union. The Federal au- 
thorities lent no aid to this movement, but, on 
the contrary, the President and Senate contempt- 
uously rejected it, and denounced it as treason, 
and all its actors and abettors as disloyal to the 
Union. An army was dispatched into the Terri- 
tory, intended indeed to preserve peace, but at 
the same time to obey and sustain the usurpa- 
tion. The provisional Legislature, which had 
met to confer, and to adopt further means to urge 
the prayers of the people upon Congress, were 
dispersed by the army, and the State officers 
provisionally elected, who had committed no 
criminal act, were arrested, indicted, and held 
in the Federal camp as State prisoners. Never- 
theless, the people of Kansas did not acquiesce. 
The usurpation remained a barren authority, de- 
fied, derided, and despised. 

A national election was now approaching. 
Excitement within and sympathies without the 
Territory must be allayed. Governor Shannon 
was removed, and Mr. Geary was appointed his 
successor. He exacted submission to the statutes 
of the usurpation, but promised equality in their 
administration. He induced a repeal of some of 
those statutes which were most obviously uncon- 
stitutional, and declared an amnesty for political 
offences. He persuaded the Legislature of the 
usurpation to ordain a call for a Convention at 
Lecompton, to form a Constitution, if the measure 
should be approved by a popular vote at an 
election to be held for that purpose. To vote at 
such an election was to recognise and tolerate 
the usurpation, as well as to submit to dis- 
franchising laws, and to hazard a renewal 
of the frauds and violence by which the usurp- 
ation had been established. On no account 
would the Legislature agree that the projected 
Constitution should be submitted to the people, 
after it should have been perfected by the Con- 
vention. The refusal of this just measure, so 
necessary to the public security in case of sur- 
prise and fraud, was a confession of the purpose 
on the part of the usurpation to carry a Consti- 



tution into effect by surprise and fraud. The 
Governor insisted on this provision, and demand- 
ed of the President of the United States the re- 
moval of ft partial and tyrannical judge. He 
failed to gain either measure, and incurred the 
drspleasute of the usurpation by seeking them. 
He fled from tue Territory. The Free State party 
stood aloof ti-vm the polls, and a canvass showed 
that some 2,300, less than a third of the people 
of the Territory, had sanctioned the call of a 
Convention, while the presence of the army 
alone held the Territory under a forced truce. 

At this juncture, the new Federal Administra- 
tion came in, under a President who had obtained 
success by the intervention at the polls of a third 
party — an ephemeral organization, built upon a 
foreign and frivolous issue, which had just 
strength enough and life enough to give to a Pro- 
Slavery party the aid required to produce that un- 
toward result. The new President, under a show 
of moderation, masked a more effectual interven- 
tion than that of his predecessor, in favor of 
slave labor and a slave State. Before coming 
into office, he approached or was approached by 
the Supreme Court of the United States. On 
their docket was, through some chance or de- 
sign, an action which an obscure negro man in 
Missouri had brought for his freedom against hia 
reputed master. The Court had arrived at the 
conclusion, on solemn argument, that insomuch 
as this unfortunate negro had, through some igno- 
rance or chicane in special pleading, admitted 
what could not have been proved, that he had 
descended from some African who had once 
been held in bondage, that therefore he was 
not, in view of the Constitution, a citizen of 
the United States, and therefore could not im- 
plead the reputed master in the Federal courts ; 
and on this ground the Supreme Court were 
prepared to dismiss the action, for want of juris- 
diction over the suitor's person. This decision, 
certainly as repugnant to the Declaration of In- 
dependence and to the spirit of the Constitu- 
tion, as to the instincts of humanity, never- 
theless would be one which would exhaust all 
the power of the tribunal, and exclude con- 
sideration of all other questions that had been 
raised upon the record. The counsel who had 
appeared for the negro had volunteered from 
motives of charity, and, ignorant of course of 
the -disposition which was to be made of the 
cause, had argued that his client had been freed 
from Slavery by operation -of the Missouri pro- 
hibition of 1820. The opposing counsel, paid by 
the -defending slaveholder, -had insisted, in reply, 
that that famous statute was unconstitutional. 
The mock debate had been heard in the Chamber 
of the Court in the basement of the Capitol, in the 
presence of the curious visiters at the seat of 
Government, whom the dullness of a judicial in- 
vestigation could not disgust. The Court did not 
hesitate to please the incoming President, by 
seizing this extraneous and idle forensic discus- 
sion, and converting it into an occasion for pro- 
nouncing an opinion that the Missouri prohibi- 
tion was void, and that, by force of the Consti- 
tution, Slavery existed, with all the elements of 
property in man over man, in all the Territoriea 



of the United States, paramount to any popular 
Bovereignty within the Territories, and even to 
the authority of Congress itself. 

In this ill-omened act, the Supreme Court for- 
got its own dignity, which had always been 
maintained with just judicial jealousy. They for- 
got that the province of a court is simply "/»« 
dicere," and not at all '^jus dare." They ibrgot, 
also, that one " foul sentence does more harm than 
many foul examples ; for the last do but corrupt 
the stream, while the former corrupteth the foun- 
tain." And they and the President alike forgot 
that judicial usurpation is more odious and 
intolerable than any other among the manifold 
practices of tyranny. 

The day of Inauguration came — the first one 
among all the celebrations of that great national 
pageant that was to be desecrated by a coalition 
between the Executive and Judicial departments, 
to undermine the National Legislature atid the 
liberties of the people. The President, attended 
by the usual lengthened procession, arrived and 
took his seat on the portico. The Supreme Court 
attended him there, in robes which yet exacted 
public reverence. The people, unaware of the im- 
port of the whisperings carried on between the 
President and the Chief Justice, and imbued with 
veneration for both, filled the avenues and gar- 
dens far away as the eye could reach. The Pres- 
ident addressed them in words as bland as those 
which the worst of all the Roman Emperors pro- 
nounced when he assumed the purple. He an- 
nounced (vaguely, indeed, but with self-satisfac- 
tion) the forthcoming extra-judicial exposition of 
the Constitution, and pledged his submission to it 
as authoritative and final. The Chief Justice and 
his Associates remained silent. The Senate, too, 
were there — constitutional witnesses of the trans- 
fer of administration. They too were silent, 
although the promised usurpation was to subvert 
the authority over more than half of the empire 
which Congress had assumed contemporaneously 
with the birth of the nation, and had exercised 
without interruption for near seventy years. It 
cost the President, under the circumstances, little 
exercise of magnanimity now to promise to the 
people of Kansas, on whose neck he had, with 
the aid of the Supreme Court, hung the millstone 
of Slavery, a fair trial in their attempt to cast it 
oflF, and hurl it to the earth, when they should 
come to organize a State Government. Alas ! 
that even this cheap promise, uttered under such 
great solemnities, was only made to be broken I 

The pageant ended. On the 5th of March, the 
Judges, without even exchanging their silken 
robes for courtiers' gowns, paid their salutations 
to the President, in the Executive Palace. Doubt- 
lessly the President received them as graciously 
as Charles the First did the Judges who had at 
his instance subverted the statutes of English 
Liberty. On the 6th of March, the Supreme Court 
dismissed the negro suitor, Dred Scott, to return 
to his bondage ; and having thus disposed of that 
private action for an alleged private wrong, on 
the ground of want of jurisdiction in the case, 
they proceeded with amusing solemnity to pro- 
nounce the opinion, that if they had had such 
jurisdiction, still the unfortunate negro would 



have had to remain in bondage, unrelieved, be- 
cause the Missouri prohibition violates rights of 
general property involved in Slavery, paramount 
to the authority of Congress. A few days later, 
copies of this opinion were multiplied by the 
Senate's press, and scattered in the name of the 
Senate broadcast over the land, and their publi- 
cation has not yet been disowned by the Senate. 
Simultaneously, Dred Scott, who had played the 
hand of dummy in this interesting political game, 
unwittingly, yet to the complete satisfaction of 
his adversary, was voluntarily emancipated ; and 
thus received from his master,- as a reward, the 
freedom which the Court had denied him as a 
right. 

The new President of the United States, hiiv. 
ing organized this formidable j,udi.cial battery at 
the Capitol^ was now ready (o begin his active 
demonstrations of intervention in the Territory. 
HiiTe occurred, not a new want, but an old one 
revived — a Governor for Kansas. Robert J. Walk- 
er, born and reared in Pennsylvania, a free Stale, 
but long a citizen and resident of Mississippi, a 
slave State, eminent for talent and industry, de- 
voted to the President and his party, plausible 
and persevering, untiring and efficient, seemed 
just the man to conduct the fraudulent inchoate 
proceedings of the projected Lecompton Conven- 
tion to a conclusion, by dividing the friends of 
Free Labor in the Territory, or by casting upon 
them the responsibility of defeating their own 
favorite policy by impracticability and contu- 
macy. He wanted for this purpose only an army 
and full command of the Executive exchequer of 
promises of favor and of threats of punishment. 
Frederick P. Stanton, of Tennessee, honorable 
and capable, of persuasive address, but honest 
ambition, was appointed his Secretary. The new 
agents soon found Ihey had assumed a task that 
would tax all their energies and require all their 
adroitness. On the one side, the Slave Labor 
party were determined to circumvent the people, 
and secure, through the Lecompton Convention, 
a slave State. On the other, the people were 
watchful, and determined not to be circumvented, 
and in no case to submit. Elections for dele- 
gates to that body were at hand. The Legisla- 
ture had required a census and registry of voters 
to be made by authorities designated' by itself, 
and this duty had been only partially performed in 
fifteen of the thirty-four counties, and altogether 
amitted in the other nineteen. The party of Slave 
Labor insisted on payment of taxes as a condi- 
tion of suffrage. The Free Labor party deemed 
the whole proceeding void, by reason of the usurp- 
ation practiced, and of the defective arrange- 
ments for the election. They discovered a design 
to surprise in the refusal of any guaranty that the 
Constitution, when framed, should be submitted 
to the people, for their acceptance or rejection, 
preparatory to an application under it for the ad- 
mission of Kansas into the Union. The Govern- 
or, drawing fram the ample treasury of the Ex- 
ecutive at his command, made due exhibitions 
of the army, and threatened the people with 
an acceptance of the Lecompton Constitution, 
however obnoxious to them, if they should 
refuse to vote. Wiih these menaces, he judi- 



9 



c'oi-ly mingled promises of fabulous quantities 
of liind for the endowment of roads and educa- 
tion. He dispensed with the test oaths and taxes, 
lamented the defects of census and registry, and 
promised the rejection of the Constitution, by him- 
self, by the President, and by Congress, if a full, 
fair, and complete submission of the Constitution 
should not be made by the Convention ; and he 
obtained and published pledges of such submis- 
sion by the party conventions which nominated 
the candidates for delegates, and even by an im- 
posing number of those candidates themselves. 
The people stood aloof, and refused to vote. The 
army protected the polls. The Slave Labor party 
alone voted, and voted without legal restraint, 
and so achieved an easy formal success by cast- 
ing some two thousand ballots. 

Just in this conjuncture, however, the term of 
three years' service which the usurping Legisla- 
ture had fixed for its own members expired, 
and elections, authorized by itself, were to be 
held, for the choice, not only of new members, 
but of a Delegate to Congress. While the Le- 
compton Convention was assembling, the Free 
Labor party determined to attend these Terri- 
torial elections, and contest, through them, for 
self-government within the Territory. They put 
candidates in nomination, on the express ground 
of repudiation of the whole Lecompton proceed- 
ing. The Lecompton Convention prudently ad- 
journed to a day beyond the elections. The 
parties contended at the ballot-boxes, and the 
result was a complete and conclusive triumph of 
the Free Labor party. For a moment, this victory, 
so important, was jeoparded by the fraudulent 
presentation of spurious and fabricated returns of 
elections in almost uninhabited districts, sufiB- 
cient to transfer the triumph to the Slave Labor 
party, and the Free State party was proceeding to 
vindicate it by force. The Governor and Secreta- 
ry detected, proved, and exposed, this atrocious 
fraud. The Lecompton Convention denounced 
them, and complaints against them poured in 
upon the President, from the slaveholding States. 
They were doomed from that time. The Presi- 
dent was silent. The Lecompton Convention pro- 
ceeded, and framed a Constitution which de- 
clares Slavery perpetual and irreversible, and 
postpones any alteration of its own provisions 
until after 1864, by which time they hoped that 
Slavery might have gained too deep a hold in the 
soil of Kansas to be in danger of being uprooted. 
All this was easy ; but now came the question 
whether the Constitution should be submitted 
to the people. It was confessed that it was 
obnoxious to them, and, if submitted, would be 
rejected with indignation and contempt. An 
official emissary from Washington is supposed 
to have suggested the solution which was adopt- 
ed. This was a submission in form, but not in 
fact. The President of the Convention, without 
any laws to preserve the purity of the franchise 
by penalties for its violation, was authorized to 
designate his own agents, altogether irrespective- 
ly of the Territorial authorities, and with their aid 
to told an election, in which there should be uo 
vote allowed or received, if against the Consti- 
tutioa itself. Each voter was permitted to cast a 



ballot "for the Constitution with Slavery," or 
"for the Constitution with no Slavery;" and it 
was further provided, that the Constitution 
should stand entire, if a majority' of votes should 
be cast for the Constitution with Slavery, while, 
on the other hand, if the majority of votes cast 
should be " for the Constitution with no Slavery," 
then the existing Slavery should not be disturbed, 
but should remain, with its continuance, by the 
succession of its unhappy victims by descent 
forever. But even this miserable shadow of a 
choice between forms of a slave State Constitu- 
tion was made to depend on the taking of a test 
oath to support and maintain it in the form 
which should be preferred by the majority of 
those who should vote on complying with that 
humiliation. The Governor saw that by conni- 
ving at this pitiful and wicked juggle he should 
both shipwreck his fame and become responsible 
for civil war. He remonstrated, and appealed to 
his chief, the President of the United States, to 
condemn it. Denunciations followed him from 
the Lecompton party within the Territory, and 
denunciations no less violent from the slave 
States were his greeting at the National Capital, 
The President disappointed his most effective 
friend and wisest counsellor. This present Con- 
gress had now assembled. The President, as if 
fearful of delay, forestalled our attention with 
recommendations to overlook the manifest ob- 
jections to the transaction, and to regard the an- 
ticipated result of this mock election, then not yet 
held, as equivalent to an acceptance of the Consti- 
tution by the people of Kansas, alleging that the 
refusal of the people to vote either the ballot for 
the " Constitution with Slavery," or the false and 
deceitful ballot for the " Constitution with no Sla- 
very," would justly be regarded as drawing after 
it the consequences of actual acceptance and 
adoption of the Constitution itself. His argument 
was apologetic, as it lamented that the Constitu- 
tion had not been fairly submitted ; and Jesuitical, 
as it urged that the people might, when once ad- 
mitted as a State, change the Constitution at their 
pleasure, in defiance of the provision which post- 
pones any change seven years. 

Copies of the message containing these argu- 
ments were transmitted to the Territory, to con- 
found and dishearten the Free State party, and 
obtain a surrender, at the election to be held on 
the 21st of December, on the questions submitted 
by the Convention. The people, however, were 
neither misled nor intimidated. Alarmed by this 
act of connivance by the President of the United 
States with their oppressors, they began to pre- 
pare for the last arbitrament of nations. Tho 
Secretary, Mr. Stanton, now Governor ad interim, 
issued his proclamation, calling the new Territo- 
rial Legislature to assemble to provide for pre- 
serving the public peace. An Executive spy dis- 
patched information of this proceeding to the 
President by telegraph, and instantly Mr. Stanton 
ceased to be Secretary and Governor ad interim, 
being removed by the President, by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate of the United 
States. Thus the service of Frederick P. Stanloa 
came to an abrupt end, but in a manner most hon- 
orable to himself. His chief, Mr. Walker, was less 



10 



wise and less fortunate. He resigned. Poetus ' 
Thrasea (we are informed by Tacitus) had been 
often present in the Senate, when the fathers de- 
scended to unworthy acts, and did not rise in op- 
position ; but on the occasion when Nero pro- 
cured from them a decree to celebrate, as a festi- 
val, the day on which he had murdered his mother, 
Agrippina, Paetus left his seat, and walked out 
of the chamber — thus by his virtue provoking 
future vengeance, and yet doing no service to 
the cause of Liberty. Possibly Robert J. Walker 
may fiad a less stern historian. 

The new Secretary, Mr. Denver, became Gov- 
ernor of Kansas, the fifth incumbent of that 
office appointed within less than four years, 
the legal term of one. Happily, however, for 
the honor of the country, three cf the recalls 
w ere made on the ground of the virtues of the 
parties disgraced. The Pro-Consuls of the Ro- 
man provinces were brought back to the Capital 
to answer for their crimes. 

The proceeding which the late Secretary Stan- 
ton had so wisely instituted, nevertheless, went 
on ; and it has become, as I trust, the principal 
means of rescuing from tyranny the people whom 
he governed so briefly and yet so well. The Le- 
compton Constitution had directed, that on the 
■Ith of January elections should be held to fill 
the State offices and the offices of members of the 
Legislature and member of Congress, to assume 
their trusts when the new State should be ad- 
mitted into the Union. The Legislature of the 
Territory now enacted salutary laws for preserv- 
ing the purity of elections in all cases. It di- 
rected the Lecorapton Constitution to be submit- 
ted to a fair vote on that day, the ballots being 
made to express a consent to the Constitution, 
or a rejection of it, with or without Slavery. The 
Free Labor party debated anxiously on the ques- 
tion, whether, besides voting against that Consti- 
tution, they should, under protest, vote also for 
officers to assume the trusts created by it, if Con- 
gress should admit the State under it. After a ma- 
jority had decided that no such votes should be 
cast, a minority hastily rejected the decision, and 
nominated candidates for those places, to be sup- 
ported under protest. The success of the move- 
ment, made under the most serious disadvanta- 
ges, is conclusive evidence of their strength. 
While the election held on the 2 1st of December, 
allowing all fraudulent votes, showed some six 
thousand majority for the Constitution with Sla- 
very, over some five hundred votes for the Con- 
stitution without Slavery, the election on the 
4th of January showed an aggregate majority 
of eleven thousand against the Constitution 
itself in any form, with the choice, under pro- 
test, of a Representative in Congress, and of a 
large majority of all the candidates nominated 
by the Free Labor party for the various Executive 
and Legislative trusts under the Lecompton Con- 
stitution. 

The Territorial Legislature has abolished Sla- 
very by a law to take effect in March, 1858, 
though the Lecompton Constitution contains pro- 
visions anticipating, and designed to defeat, this 
great act of justice and humanity. It has organ- 
ized 0, militia, which stands ready for the defence 



of the rights of the people against any power. 
The President of the Lecompton Convention has 
fled the Territory, charged with an attempt to pro- 
cure fraudulent returns to reverse the already de- 
clared results of the last election, and he holds 
the public in suspense as to his success until 
after his arrival at the Capital, and the decision 
of Congress on the acceptance of the Lecompton 
Constitution. In the mean time, the Territorial 
Legislature has called a Convention, subject to 
the popular approval, to be held in March next, 
and to form a Constitution to be submitted to 
the people, and, when adopted, to be the organic 
law of the new State of Kansas, subject to her 
admission into the Union. The President of the 
United States, having received the Lecompton 
Constitution, has submitted it to Congress, and in- 
sisting that the vote taken on the juggle of the Le- 
compton Convention, held on the 21st of Decem- 
ber, is legally conclusive of its acceptance by the 
people, and absolute against the fair, direct, and 
unimpeachable rejection of it by that people, made 
on the 4th of January lust, he recommends and 
urges and implores the admission of Kansas as a 
State into the Federal Union, under that false, 
pretended, and spurious Constitution. I refrain 
from any examination of this extraordinary mes- 
sage. My recital is less complete than I have 
hoped, if it does not overthrow all the President's 
arguments in favor of the acceptance of the Le- 
compton Constitution as an act of the people of 
Kansas, however specious, and without descend- 
ing to any details. In Congress, those who seek 
the admission of Kansas under that Constitution, 
strive to delay the admiesion of Minnesota, until 
their opponents shall compromise on that para- 
mount question. 

This, Mr. President, is a concise account of the 
national intervention in the Territories in favor of 
slave labor and slave States since 1820. No 
wonder that the question before us excites ap- 
prehensions and alarms. There is at last a North 
side of this Chamber, a North side of the Cham- 
ber of Representatives, a North side of the Union, 
as well as South sides of all these. Each of 
them is watchful, jealous, and resolute. If it be 
true, as has so often been asserted, that this Un- 
ion cannot survive the decision by Congress of a 
direct question involving the adoption of a free 
State which will establish the ascendency of 
free States under the Constitution, and draw 
after it the restoration of the influence of Free- 
dom in the domestic and foreign conduct of the 
Government, then the day of dissolution is at 
hand. 

I have thus, Mr. President, arrived at the third 
circumstance attending the Kansas question 
which I have thought worthy of consideration, 
namely, that the national intervention in the 
Territories in favor of slave labor and slave States 
is opposed to the material, moral, and social de- 
velopments of the Republic. The proposition 
seems to involve a paradox, but it is easy to 
understand that the checks which the Constitu- 
tion applies, through prudent caution, to the 
relative increase of the representation of the free 
States in the House of Representatives, and es- 
pecially in the Senate, co-operating with the 



11 



differences of temper and political activity be- 
Iweca the two classes of States, may direct the 
Government of the Federal Union in one course, 
while the tendencies of the nation itself, popularly 
regarded, are in a direction exactly opposite. 

The ease and success which attended the ear- 
lier policy of intervention in favor of free labor 
and free States, and the resistance which the 
converse policy of intervention in favor of slave 
labor and slave States encounters, sufficiently es- 
tablish the existence of the antagonism between 
the Government and the nation which I have 
asserted. A vessel moves quietly and peacefully 
while it descends with the current. You mark its 
way by the foam on its track only when it is forced 
against the tide. I will not dwell on other 
proofs — such as the more rapid growth of the free 
States, the ruptures of ecclesiastical Federal 
Unions, and the demoralization and disorganiza- 
tion of political parties. 

Mr. President, I have shown why it is that the 
Kansas question is attended by difficulties and 
dangers only by way of preparation for the sub- 
mission of my opinions in regard to the manner 
in which that question ought to be determined 
and settled. I think, with great deference to the 
judgments of others, that the expedient, peaceful, 
and right way to determine it, is to reverse the ex- 
isting policy of intervention in favor of slave labor 
and slave States. It would be wise to restore the 
Missouri prohibition of Slavery in Kansas and Ne- 
braska. There was peace in the Territories and 
in the States until that great statute of Freedom 
was subverted. It is true that there were fre- 
quent debates here on the subject of Slavery, 
and that there were profound sympathies among 
the people, awakened by or responding to those 
debates. But what was Congress instituted 
for but debate ? What makes the American peo- 
ple to differ from all other nations, but this — that 
while among them power enforces silence, here 
all public questions are referred to debate, free 
debate in Congress. Do you tell me that the Su- 
preme Court of the United States has removed 
the foundations of that great statute ? I reply, 
that they have done no such thing ; they could 
not do it. They have remanded the negro man 
Drt^d Scott to the custody of his master. With 
that decree we have nothing here, at least nothing 
now, to do. This is the extent of the judgment 
rendered, the extent of any judgment they could 
render. Already the pretended further decision 
is subverted in Kansas. So it will be in every 
free State and in every free Territory of the 
United States. The Supreme Court, also, can re- 
rerse its spurious judgment more easily than we 
could reconcile the people to its usurpation. 
Sir, the Supreme Court of the United States at- 
tempts to command the people of the United 
States to accept the principles that one man can 
own other men, and that they must guaranty the 
inviolability of that false and pernicious property. 
The people of the United States never can, and 
they never will, accept principles so unconstitu- 
tional and so abhorrent. Never, never. Let the 
Court recede. Whether it recede or not, we shall 
reorganize the Court, and thus reform its po- 
litical sentiments and practices, and bring them 



into harmony with the Constitution and with the 
laws of nature. In doing so, we shall not only 
reassnme our own just authority, but we shall re- 
store that high tribunal itself to the position it 
ought to maintain, since so many invaluable 
rights of citizens, and even of States themselves, 
depend upon its impartiality and its wisdom. 

Do you tell me that the slave States will not 
acquiesce, but will agitate ? Think first whether 
the free States will acquiesce in a decision that 
shall not only be unjust, but fraudulent. True, 
they will not menace the Republic. They have 
an easy and simple remedy, namely, to take the 
Government out of unjust and unfaithful hands, 
and commit it to those which will be just and 
fiiithful. They are ready to do this now. They 
want only a little more harmony of purpose 
and a little more completeness of organization. 
These will result from only the least addition to 
the pressure of Slavery upon them. You are lend- 
ing all that is necessary, and even moi-e, in this 
very act. But will the slave States agitate? Why? 
Because they have lost at last a battle that 
they could not win, unwisely provoked, fought 
with all the advantages of strategy and in- 
tervention, and on a field chosen by themselves. 
What would they gain ? Can they compel Kan 
sas to adopt Slavery against her will ? Would 
it be reasonable or just to do it, if they could ? 
Was negro servitude ever forced by the sword 
on any people that inherited the blood which cir- 
culates in our veins, and the sentiments which 
make us a free people ? If they will agitate on 
such a ground as this, then how, or when, by 
what concessions we can make, will they ever be 
satisfied? Towhat end would they agitate? It can 
now be only to divide the Union. Will they not 
need some fairer or move plausible excuse for a 
proposition so desperate ? How would they im- 
prove their condition, by drawing down a certain 
ruin upon themselves ? Would they gain any new 
security for Slavery? Would they not hazard 
securities that are invaluable ? Sir, they who 
talk so idly, talk what they do not know them- 
selves. No man when cool can promise what he 
will do when he shall be inflamed; no man in- 
flamed can speak for his actions when time and 
necessity shall bring reflection. Much less can 
any one speak for States in such emergencies. 

But, I shall not insist, now, on so radical a 
measure as the restoration of the Missouri pro- 
hibition. I know how difficult it is for power to re- 
linquish even a pernicious and suicidal policy all 
at once. We may attain the same result, in this 
particular case of Kansas, without going back so 
far. Go back only to the ground assumed in 1854, 
the ground of popular sovereignty. Happily for 
the authors of that measure, the zealous and ener- 
getic resistance of abuses practiced under it has 
so far been effective that popular sovereignty in 
Kansas may now be made a fact, and Liberty there 
may be rescued from danger through its free ex- 
ercise. Popular sovereignty is an epic of two 
parts. Part the first presents Freedom in Kansas 
lost. Part the second, if you will so consent to 
write it, shall be Freedom in Kansas regained. It 
is on this ground that I hail the eminent Senator 
from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] and his associates, 



12 



the distinguished Senior from Michigan, [Mr. 
Stuart,] and the youthful, but most brave 
Senator from California, [Mr. Brodeuick.] The 
late Mr. Clay told us that Providence has many 
ways for saving nations. God forbid that I 
should coHsent to see Freedom wounded, because 
my own lead or even my own agency in saving 
it should be rejected. I will cheerfully co-ope- 
rate with these new defenders of this sacred cause 
in Kansas, and I will award them all due praise, 
when we "shall have been successful, for their 
large share of merit in its deliverance. 

Will you tell me that it is difficult to induce the 
Senate and the House of Representatives to take 
that short backward step? On the contrary, the 
hardest task that an Executive dictator ever set, 
or parliamentary manager ever undertook, is to 
prevent this very step from being taken. Let 
the President take off his hand, and the bow, 
oent so long, and held to its tension by so 
aard a pressure, will relax, and straighten itself 
at once. 

Consider now, if you please, the consequences 
of your refusal. If you attempt to coerce Kan- 
sas into the Union, under the Lecompton Consti- 
tution, the people of that Territory will resort 
to civil war. You are pledged to put down 
that revolution by the sword. Will the people 
listen to your voice amid the thunders of your 
cannon ? Let but one drop of the blood of a free 
citizen be shed there, by the Federal army, and 
the countenance of every representative of a free 
State, in either House of Congress, will blanch, 
and his tongue will refuse to utter the vote neces- 
sary to sustain the army in the butchery of his 
fellow-citizens. 

Practically, you have already one intestine and 
Territorial war. A war against Brigham Young 
in Utah. Can you carry on two, and confine the 
strife within the Territories ? Can you win both ? 
A wise nation will never provoke more than 
one enemy at one time. I know that you argue 
that the Free State men of Kansas are impracti- 
cable, factious, seditious? Answer me three 
questions : Are they not a majority, and so pro- 
claimed by the people of Kansas ? Is not this 
quarrel, for the right of governing themselves, 
conceded by the Federal Constitution ? Is the 
tyranny of forcing a hateful Government upon 
them, less intolerable than three cents impost 
on a pound of tea, or five cents stamp duty on a 
promissory note ? You say that they can change 
this Lecompton Constitution when it shall once 
have been forced upon them. Let it be aban- 
doned now. What guaranty can you give 
against your own intervention to prevent that 
future change? What security can you give 
for your own adherence to the construction of 
the Constitutiou which you adopt, from expe- 
diency, to-day ? What >)etter is a Constitution 
than a by-law of a corporation, if it may be forced 
on a State to-day, and rejected to-morrow, in 
derogation of its own express inhibition? 

I perceive, Mr. President, that, in the way 
of argument, I have passed already from the 
ground of expediency, on which I was standing, 
to that of right and justice. Among all our 
refinements o*" constitutional learning, one prin- 



I cipie, one fuudamenul |)riiici|)le, has been 
fully preserved, namely: That the new ' 



faith- 

lly preserved, namely: That the new States 
must come voluntarily into the Union ; they must 
not be forced into it. " Unite or Die,"' was the 
motto addressed to the States in the time of the 
Revolution. Though Kansas should perish, she 
cannot be brought into the Union by force. 

So long as the States shall come in by free 
consent, their admission will be an act of union, 
and this will be a Confederacy. Whenever they 
shall be brought in by fraud or force, their ad- 
mission will be an act of consolidation, and the 
nation, ceasing to be a Confederacy, will become 
in reality an Empire. All our elementary in- 
struction is wrong, or else this change of the 
Constitution will subvert the liberties of the 
American people. 

You argue the consent of Kansas from docu- 
mentary proofs, from her forced and partial ac- 
quiescence, under your tyrannical rule, from elec- 
tions fraudulently conducted, from her own con- 
tumacy, and from .your own records, made up 
here against her. I answer the whole argument 
at once: Kansas protests here, and stands, by 
your own confession, in an attitude of rebellion 
at homo, to resist the annexation which you con- 
tend she is soliciting at your hands. 

Sir, if your proofs were a thousand times 
stronger, I would not hold the people of Kansas 
bound by them. They all are contradicted by 
stern fact. A people can be bound by no ac- 
tion conducted in their name, and pretending 
to their sanction, unless they enjoj' perfect free- 
dom and safety in giving that consent. You have 
held the people of Kansas in duress from the 
first hour of their attempted organization as a 
community. To crown this duress by an act, at 
once forcing Slavery on them, which they hate, 
and them into a union with you, on terms which 
they abhor, would be but to illustrate anew, and 
on a grand scale, the maxim — 

''Frosperum etfeliz scelus, virtus vacatur" 

Mr. President, it is an occasion for joy and 
triumph, when a community that has gathered it- 
self together under circumstances of privation and 
exile, and proceeded through a season of Territo- 
rial or provincial dependence on distant central 
authority, becomes a State, in the full enjoyment 
of civil and religious liberty, and rises into the 
dignity of a member of this Imperial Union. But, 
in the case of Kansas, her whole existence has 
been, and it yet is, a trial, a tempest, a chaos — 
and now you propose to make her nuptials a 
celebration of the funeral of her freedom. The 
people of Kansas are entitled to save that free- 
dom, for they have won it back when it had been 
wrested from them by invasion and usurpation. 
Sir, you are great and strong. On this continent 
there is no Power can resist you. On any other, 
there is hardly a Power that would not reluctant- 
ly engage with you — but you can never, never 
conquer Kansas. Your power, like a throne 
which is built of pine boards, and covered with 
purple, is weakness, except it be defended by a 
people confiding in ycu, because satisfied that 
you are just, and grateful for the freedom that, 
under you, they enjoy. 



13 



Liir, in view, once more, of this subject of 
Slavery, I submit that our own dignity requires 
that we shall give over this champerty with 
slaveholders, which we practice in prescribing 
acquiescence in their rule as a condition of toler- 
ation of self-government in the Territories. We 
are defeated in it. We may wisely give it up, 
and admit Kansas as a free State, since she will 
consent to be admitted only in that character. 

Mr. President, if I could at all suppose it de- 
sirable or expedient to enlarge the field of slave 
.abor, and ofslaveholdingsway, in this Republic,! 
should nevertheless maintain that it is wise to 
relinquish the effort to sustain Slavery in Kan- 
sas. The question, in regard to that Territory, 
has risen from a private one about Slavery as a 
domestic institution, to one of Slavery as a 
national policy. At every step, you have been 
failing. Will you go on still further, ever con- 
fident, and yet ever unsuccessful? 

I believe, sir, to some extent, in the isothermal 
theory. I think there are regions, beginning at 
the North pole, and stretching southward, where 
Slavery will die out soon, if it be planted; and I 
know, too well, that in the tropics, and to some 
extent northward of them, Slavery lives long, 
and is hard to extirpate. But I cannot find a 
certain boundary. I am sure, however, that 36° 
SC is too far north. I think it is a movable 
boundary, and that every year it advances to- 
wards a more southern parallel. 

But is there just now a real want, of a new 
_ State for the employment of slave labor? I see 
' and feel the need of room for a new State to be 
.assigned to free labor, of room for such a new 
State almost every year. I think I see how it 
arises. Free white men abound in this country, 
and in Europe, and even in Asia. Economically 
speaking, their labor is cheap — there is a surplus 
of it. Under improved conditions of society, life 
grows longer, and men multiply faster. Wars, 
which sometimes waste them, grow less frequent 
and less destructive. Invention is continually 
producing machines and engines, artificial labor- 
ers, crowding them from one field of industry to 
another — ever more frsm the Eastern regions of 
this continent to the West, ever more from the 
overcrowded Eastern continent to the prairies 
and the wildernesses in our own. But I do not 
see any such overflowing of the African slave 
population in this country, even where it is 
unresisted. Free labor has been obstructed in 
Kansas. There are, nevertueless, 50,000 or 60,000 
freemen gathered there already ; gathered there 
within four years. Slave labor has been free to 
importation. There are only 100 to 200 slaves 
there. To settle and occupy a new slave State 
anywhere is, pari passu, to depopulate old slave 
States. Whence, then, are the supplies of slaves 
to come, and how? Only by reviving the African 
slave trade. But this is forbidden. Visionaries 
dream that the prohibition can be repealed. The 
idea is insane. A Republic of thirty millions of 
freemen, with a free white laboring population so 
dense as already to crowd on subsistence, to be 
brought to import negroes from Africa to sup- 
plant them as cultivators, and so to subject them- 
selves to starvation Though Africa is yet un- 



organized, and una'ble to protect itself, still it bag 
already exchanged, in a large degree, its wars to 
make shives-, and its commerce in slaves, foi 
legitimate agriculture and trade. All European 
States are interested in the civilization of that 
continent, and they will not consent that we 
shall arrest it. The Christian church cannot 
be forced back two centuries, and be made to 
sanction the African slave trade as a missionary 
enterprise. 

^very nation has always some ruling idea, 
wnich, however, changes with the several stages 
of its development. A ruling idea of the colonies 
on this continent, two hundred years ago, was 
labor to subdue and reclaim nature. Then Afri- 
can Slavery was seized and employed as an aux- 
iliary, under a seeming necessity. That idea 
has ceased forever. It has given place to a new 
one. Aggrandizement of the nation, not indeed 
as it once was, to make a small State great, 
but to make a State already great the great- 
est of all States. It still demands labor, but it 
is no longer the ignorant labor of barbarians, 
but labor perfected by knowledge and skill, 
and combination with all the scientific principles 
of mechanism. It demands, not the labor of 
slaves, which needs to be watched and defended, 
but voluntary, enlightened labor, stimulated by 
interest, affection, and ambition. It needs that 
every man shall own the land he tills ; that every 
head shall be fit for the helmet, and every hand 
fit for the sword, and every mind ready and qual- 
fied for counsel. To attempt to aggrandize a 
country with slaves for its inhabitants, would be 
to try to make a large body of empire with feeble 
sinews and empty veins. 

Mr. President, the expansion of territory to 
make slave States will only fail to be a great 
crime, because it is impracticable, and therefore 
will turn out to be a stupendous imbecility. A 
free republican Government, like this, notwith- 
standing all its constitutional checks, cannot 
long resist and counteract the progress of socie- 
ty. Slavery, wherever and whenever, and in 
whatsoever form it exists, is exceptional, local, 
and short-lived. Freedom is the common right 
interest, and ultimate destiny, of all mankind. 
All other nations have already abolished, or are 
about abolishing, Slavery. Does this fact mean 
nothing ? All parties in this country that have 
tolerated the extension of Slavery, except one, 
has perished for that error already. That last 
one — the Democratic party — is hurrying on, irre- 
trievably, toward the same fate. AH Adminis- 
trations that have avowed this policy have gone 
down dishonored for that cause, except the pres- 
ent one. A pit deeper and darker still is open- 
ing to receive this Administration, because it 
sins more deeply than its predecessors. There 
is a meaning in all these facts, which it becomes 
us to study well. The nation has advanced 
another stage ; it has reached the point where 
intervention, by the Government, for Slavery and 
slave States, will no longer be tolerated. Free 
labor has at last apprehended its rights, its in- 
terests, its power, and its destiny, and is organi- 
zing itself to assume the government of the Re- 
public. It will henceforth meet you boldly and 



14 



resolutely here ; it will meet you everywhere, in 
the Territories or out of them, wherever you may 
go to exieaii Slavery. It has driven you back in 
California and in Kansas ; it will invade you soon 
in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and 
Texas. It will meet you in Arizona, in Central 
America, and even in Cuba. The invasion will be 
not merely harmless, but beneficent, if you yield 
seasonably to its just and moderated demands. It 
proved soin New York, New Jersey, Pennsylva- 
nia, and the other slave States, which have al- 
ready yielded in that way to its advances. You 
may, indeed, get a start under or near the tropics, 
and seem safe for a time, but it will be only a 
short time. Even there you will found States 
only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The 
:nterest of the white races demands the ultimate 
emancipation of all men. Whether that con- 
summation shall be allowed to take effect, with 
needful and wise precautions against sudden 
change and disaster, or be hurried on by vio- 
lence, is all that remains for you to'decide. For 
the failure of your system of slave labor through- 
out the Republic, the responsibility will rest not 
on the agitators you condemn, or on the political 
parties you arraign, or even altogether on your- 
selves, but it will be due to the inherent error of 
the system itself, and to the error which thrusts 
it forward to oppose and resist the destiny, not 
more of the African than that of the white races. 
The white man needs this continent to labor 
upon. His head is clear, his arm ia strong, and 
his necessities are fixed. He must and will have 
it. To secure it, he will oblige the Government 
of the United States to abandon intervention in 
favor of slave labor and slave States, and go 
backward forty years, and resume the original 
policy of intervention in favor of free labor and 
free States. The fall of the castle of San Juan 
d'UUoa determined the fate of Mexico, although 
sore sieges and severe pitched battles intervened 
before the capture of the capital of the Aztecs. 
The defeats you have encountered in California 
and in Kansas determine the fate of the principle 
for which you have been contending. It is for 
yourselves, not for us, to decide how long and 
through what further mortifications and disas- 
ters the contest shall be protracted, before Free- 
dom shall enjoy her already assured triumph. 
I would have it ended now, and would have the 
wounds of society bound up and healed. But this 
can be done only in one way. It cannot be done 
by offering further resistance, nor by any eva- 
sion or partial surrender, nor by forcing Kansas 
into the Union as a slave State, against her will, 
leaving her to cast off Slavery afterwards, as she 
best may ; nor by compelling Minnesota and Ore- 
gon to wait, and wear the humiliating costume 
of Territories at the doors of Congress, until the 
people of Kansas, or their true defenders here, 
shall be brought to dishonorable compromises. 
It can be done only by the simple and direct ad- 
mission of the three new States as free States 
without qualification, condition, reservation, or 
compromise, and by the abandonment of all fur- 
ther attempts to extend Slavery under the Fede- 
ral Constitution. You have unwisely pushed 
Ihe controversy so far, that only these broad cou- 



cessions will now be accepted by the interest of 
free labor and free States. For myself, I see this 
fact, perhaps, the more distinctly now, because 
I have so long foreseen it. I can therefoie 
counsel nothing less than those concessions. 1 
know the hazards I incur in taking this position. 
I know how men and parties, now earnest, and 
zealous, and bold, may yet fall away from me, as 
the controversy shall wax warm, and alarms and 
dangers, now unlooked for, shall stare them in 
the face, as men and parties, equally earnest, 
bold, and zealous, have done, in like circum- 
stances, before. But it is the same position I 
took in the case of California, eight years ago. 
It is the same 1 maintained on the great occa- 
sion of the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, 
four years ago. Time and added experience 
have vindicated it since, and I assume it again, to 
be maintained to the last, with confidence, that 
it will be justified, ultimately, by the country 
and by the civilized world. You may refuse to 
yield it now, and for a short period, but your re- 
fusal will only animate the friends of Freedom 
with the courage and the resolution, and pro- 
duce the union among them, which alone are ne- 
cessary, on their part, to attain the position it- 
self simultaneously with- the impending over- 
throw of the existing Federal Administration and 
the constitution of a new and more independent 
Congress. 

Mr. President, this expansion of the empire of 
free white men is to be conducted through the 
process of admitting new States, aud not other- 
wise. The white man, whether you consent or 
not, will make the States to be admitted, and he 
will make them all free States. We must admit 
them, and admit them all free ; otherwise, 
they will become independent and foreign States, 
constituting a new empire to contend with us for 
the continent. To admit them is a simple, easy, 
and natural policy. It is not new to us, or 
to our times. It began with the voluntary 
union of the first thirteen. It has continued 
to go 'On, overriding all resistance, ever since. 
It will go on until the ends of the continent 
are the borders o^ our Union. Thus we be- 
come co-laborers with our fathers, and even 
with our posterity throughout • many ages. 
After times, contemplating the whole vast 
structure, completed and perfected, will for- 
get the dates, and the eras, and the individu- 
alities, of the builders in their successive genera- 
tions. It will be one great Republic, founded by 
one body of benefactors. I wonder that the 
President of the United States undervalues the 
Kansas question, when it is a part of a transaction 
so immense and sublime. Far from sympathizing 
with him in his desire to depreciate it, and to be 
rid of it, I felicitate myself on my humble rela- 
tion to it, for I know that Heaven cannot grant 
nor man desire a more favorable occasion to ac- 
quire fame, than he enjoys who is engaged in 
laying the foundations of a great empire ; and I 
know, also, that while mankind have often dei- 
fied their benefactors, no nation has ever yet 
bestowed honors on the memories of the founders 
of Slavery. 

I have always believed, Mr. President, that 



15 



th'S glorious Federal Constitution of our? is 
adapted to the inevitable expansion of the empire 
■which I have so feebly presented. It has been 
perverted often by misconstruction, and it has 
yet to be perverted many times, and widely, here- 
after; but it has inherent strength and vigor 
that will cast off all the webs which the ever- 
changing interests of classes may weave around 
it. If it fail us now, it will, however, not be 
our fault, but because an inevitable crisis, like 
that of youth, or of manhood, is to be encoun- 
tered by a constitution proved in that case to 
bo inadequate to the trial. I am sure that 
no patriot, who views the subject as I do, 
could wish to evade or delay the trial. By de- 
lay we could only extend Slavery, at the most, 



throughout the Atlantic region of the continent. 
The Pacific slope is free, and it always must and 
will be "free. The mountain barriers that sepa- 
rate us from that portion of our empire are quite 
enough to alienate us too widely, possibly to sep- 
arate us too soon. Let us only become all slave- 
holding States on this side of those barriers, Avhile 
only free States are organized and perpetuated on 
the other side, and then indeed there will coma 
a division of the great American family into 
two nations, equally ambitious for complete 
control over the continent, and a conflict be- 
tween them, over which the world will mourn, 
as the greatest and last to be retrieved of all 
the calamities that have over befallen the humaa 
race. 



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